1999-10-07: Fall 1999

MEETING OF OCTOBER 7, 1999

The fall meeting of the SSRIC was held at California State University, Monterey Bay. This was the first time, but not the last time that such meetings will be held at that campus!

Members present: George Baldwin (Monterey Bay); Nan Chico (Hayward); Jon Ebeling (Chico); Jim Gerber, (San Diego); Tony Hernandez, SSDBA; John Korey (Pomona); Ed Nelson (Fresno); Jim Ross (Bakersfield); Richard Shaffer (San Luis Obispo); Rich Taketa (San Jose); Gene Turner (Northridge)

Members absent: Ted Anagnoson (Los Angeles); Elliot Barkan (San Bernardino); Margaret Blue (Dominguez Hills); Don Dixon (Sonoma); JeDon Emenhiser (Humboldt); Phil Gianos (Fullerton); Larry Giventer (Stanislaus); Frank Gossett (Long Beach); Ted Lascher (Sacramento); Richard Serpe (San Marcos); David Tabb (San Francisco)

Please note: There were changes in the arrangements of the meeting agenda, they are not listed here in numerical order, and some are not listed at all.

Jim Gerber called the meeting to order and chaired the subsequent meeting discussions.

Agenda Items

1.   A motion to approve the minutes of the Spring meeting, 1999 by Korey and Turner, seconded. The motion carried unanimously.

2.   SSDBA report by Tony Hernandez.

Tony circulated a Progress Report for the SSDBA and highlighted the following items from the print

copy:

·   He is looking for an individual to assist in the day-today activities of the SSDBA. Three individuals were interviewed over the summer of 1999, one offer was made and the candidate declined the position.

·   A new computer will be purchased for the purpose of backing up and preserving the functionality of the archive. The current Unix based computers cannot be upgraded adequately to perform additional tasks such as subsetting. The new machine should be up and running by the end of the fiscal year.

·   Several informational activities have been initiated with the purpose of increaseing the profile of the SSDBA. A brochure describing the SSDBA was distributed to the SSRIC reps for the purpose of distributing it on their campuses. In addition, the SSDBA would like to increae the number of workshops on the various campuses. And finally, work has begun on the creation of a collaborative relationship with other campuses, UCLA for example. It was suggested that perhaps the SSDBA could be promoted through the Stateline newspaper

·   The SSDBA has acquired the Social Science Electronic Data Library from Sociometrics, consisting of 201 studies and over 300 data sets. It was noted that the California Sociological Association meeting in Berkeley will have a session on the materials from Sociometrics.

·   An automated account creation program is under development.

·   Work continues on securing external grant support for special projects and for the acquisition of datTony indicated concern for attracting the non-subscribers and the policy possibilities for those who are not members. Discussion continued on this topic, as there was a suggestion to cut the cost of the subscription in half to those campuses that are not now members as an incentive to join. Discussion continued on the use of research papers by students and faculty who use the SSDBA system.

·       Ebeling wanted to see if we could get data from the World Bank.

3. Ed Nelson was selected as the SSRIC representative to CLRIT Ad Hoc TAsk Force on oversight for the two system-funded specialty centers--AMSPEC and SSDBA.

4. Changes to the By-Laws of the SSRIC.

·       Change Article VII section 5 to "if' from "it." Under the proposed change, section 5 will read: "If any campus is not represented at a minimum of one SSRIC meeting during the academic year prior to the ICPSR meeting, that campus will be moved to the bottom of the rotation list."

·       It was moved and seconded that the quotes from Article III Paragraph 1 be removed.

·       Change the first two sentences of Article III section 1 with the following: "Each campus shall appoint one representative (and, optionally, an alternative representative with full rights and responsibilities when acting as such) to the Council."

All of these constitutional changes were moved by John Korey and seconded by Gene Turner. The Council voted unanimous approval.

5. ICPSR Biennial meeting in Ann Arbor

There will only be four of the five OR's attending. There are two members from Fresno (Nelson) and from Bakersfield (Ross) giving papers at the Conference. They are not defined as part of the subsidized travel to Ann Arbor provided in the arrangements with ICPSR. It was agreed that the SSDBA should use the 5th spot. The four campuses planning on attending are: Sacramento, Northridge, Hayward, and Chico.

6. Richard Schaffer distributed a screen capture program called Snag-It to interested parties. Ten copies of the program were purchased with funds from sales of the SPSS book. The authors of the book only needed 6 copies, leaving 4 for distribution first-come first-serve.

7. Ebeling was re-appointed as the organizer for the summer program, 2000 from SSRIC to propose the distribution of our credits to attend the ICPSR summer programs.

8. The SSRIC mailing list was circulated at this time to see if corrections should be made to it.

9. Ed Nelson commented on the Field Institute opportunities. He announced the opportunities with Field:

question credits, student internships and faculty fellowships. He noted that January 15th is typical deadline for these applications.

10.          Ed Nelson described the NSF grant effort updates. Suggestions about how to improve the proposal ensued: 1) use WebCT; 2) use STATA; 3) promote the use of it in the project design part of the

proposal. Discussion and further suggestions ensued.

11.        John Korey suggested the development of an SSRIC newsletter for campuses. Such a newsletter

might cover the following topics:

·     The Student Research Conference

·     Various web sites that are important and used by us

·     Reviews of software such as STATA

·     Other possibilities included the descriptions of data bases and how they are used in research and classes

12.    The Student Research Conference is planned for CSU, Dominguez Hills on February 24-25th

13.    Ebeling presented a brief presentation on STATA. He recommended that the CSU buy a site license for it to run on the SSDBA computer in Los Angeles. He discovered that the licensing of software such as SPSS and such occurs inside the Chancellor's office. Furthermore, the SSDBA has stated that it will no longer offer the service of operating statistical software (e.g., SPSS) for faculty working with large data sets. Discussion followed as to how the SSRIC might persuade the system to buy a site license for STATA.

14.    After this discussion ended the conference business meeting ended at about 3:00pm.